I bet you get a lot of Christian hate letters, but anyway, I
am an atheist. I was just wondering, do you think that in enough time everyone
will be atheist? I think in a couple of hundred years that might happen.
What do you think?

In enough time, perhaps. But I doubt this will happen in our lifetimes
or even within the next few hundred years. Freethinkers have been predicting
the demise of since the time of Charles Darwin (150 years ago), but, if
anything, the incidence of religious credulity has increased since then
-- at least in America. Religion has gone down considerably in Europe,
though, to the point where I would say faith in God is no longer much of
a factor in European life. The religious institutions, though, still play
a very active role in the communities both in Europe and especially in
America. Here are two reasons why I think religion will be with us for
a long time.

Firstly, some think religion in general has too much going for it. (See
Michael Shermer's new book "Why We Believe" for the argument
that religion has certain advantages that no other group can claim.) Even
though the tendency in Europe is moving away from a belief in a personal
deity and more toward a deistic or pantheistic force, the religious institutions
are still active in providing the services that they always have. America
is more religious today than it has ever been before. We've been to the
moon, but 45 percent of Americans are young-earth creationists. Go figure.

As for Shermer's argument that religion has a lot to offer, I think
we cannot overrule the possibility that religion's position (to be able
to provide these things) is artificially maintained. In other words, we
don't live in a society where secular groups and agencies have the resources
to even begin offering those things that religion has monopolized for thousands
of years. The fact that both Gore and Bush are pushing to give government
money to religions to increase their competitive edge in the charity business
doesn't look good, because I would like to see secular agencies allowed
to compete with the religious groups in meeting the needs of the communities.
The Bush-Gore choice (Some choice!) will squash any chance of secular agencies
being able to compete with religion to see if We, the People can do a better
job at doling out these resources more fairly and more efficiently. As
it stands, if we give more money to the churches, we will need to spend
precious resources policing the churches to make sure they don't exploit
their position to proselytize to those who receive the benefits. It seems
much easier simply to administer these resources through purely secular
government agencies.

Secondly, and more realistically, I think the tendency toward credulity
may have been selected into the population for a long time, through persecution
of nonbelievers. Conversely, the tendency toward skepticism has been selected
out of the population through the same means of state persecution of nonbelievers
and other-believers. (See chapter 4 of Victor Stenger's "Physics and
Psychics," reprinted in the November, 1999, issue of "Positive
Atheism," for this argument.) This argument is very powerful to explain
why, in this day and age, so many people are fleeing toward superstitious
beliefs. That people would be superstitious at all is, to me, an enigma.
I absolutely cannot fathom why people would be religious in this day and
age -- until I examine my own mind and my own occasional urges to flee
to religion. Author Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange) likened
this tendency in himself to a vestigial organ or muscle (like the human
appendix or the muscles on our heads that used to move our ears). Just
as these organs are there in the body but no longer used or necessary,
these tendencies toward faith and credulity are there in the mind. Unfortunately,
they have today become a liability, whereas for most of the history of
civilization they could be conceived as having been an asset toward securing
the peace and allowing a clan to thrive.

Thus, I am predicting that religion will not go away any time soon.
We can only hope that religion never comes to dominate the government like
it did in the Dark Ages. To hope it goes away entirely, I think, is to
hope unrealistically.